Her head jerked up from where she was sliding a pastry into a white paper bag.
“Has Torin not said anything?” she asked breathlessly, her dark grey eyes wide and shiny. “I mean, he’s your true mate, right?”
I shot her back my best fake smile. The one that said we were old friends and confidantes, and she should feel secure in sharing all of her secrets with me. “Of course, Torin and I have discussed it in detail, but he remembers nothing of significance and suggested that I question a few of the more upstanding citizens in the pack. In the hopes that from another perspective, there might be more information out there.”
Dropping Torin’s name burned my tongue, but I legitimately wasn’t above using his position in the pack to get the answers I needed. I had to get out of Torma soon, before Torin forced his will on me, but I couldn’t leave until the mystery was solved.
Someone had fucked with me and I was determined to find out who.
7
Brenda’s movements didn’t suggest she was panicked by my question, but I felt her unease. The only things that had stopped her from brushing me off, in the hope of avoiding an uncomfortable topic, were my words about Torin encouraging this. No one wanted to go against the alpha.
“In all honesty,” she said softly, “I haven’t really seen you in town since we were brought back from our stasis. We all figured that you were dealing with your bond, learning how to be alpha-mate.”
I paused. “Torin has only been an alpha of Torma for what… two months? Wouldn’t he be learning it too?”
She blinked. “It feels so much longer, but yes, I suppose that is correct. No doubt the many years under Victor acclimated him to the role much faster.”
The look on her face told me that she really hadn’t stopped to think about it, just going about her daily life for the last two months without questioning how the fuck we’d all been frozen for years.
How had none of them lost their minds too at the thought that the world around us had continued moving while we’d stayed the same? In stasis. Vulnerable to any who’d wanted to hurt us.
When I asked Brenda a condensed version of that, she shrugged. “Most of us never leave Torma anyway. And what’s two years when we live hundreds? We celebrated the release of our punishment, and now we live our lives. You should just be happy with your gifts, Mera. You’re our beloved alpha-mate, and through a quirk in fate, the sins of your family were wiped away in a single instant.”
My jaw ached at how hard my teeth were clenched. Everyone was feeding me the same line.Be happy with what you have; don’t worry about the past; move forward and enjoy your newfound popularity.
I could tell they thought I was being an ungrateful brat who just couldn’t stop poking and prodding at the fabric of our pack. But, seriously, there was something majorly wrong here. I felt it so deep inside that it was butting heads with my DNA.
A few other shifters entered her shop then, and I wasn’t able to interrogate Brenda any further. In reality, I already knew she held no other answers. Just like everyone else, she hadn’t questioned what had happened to us, already back to living her same day-to-day reality. If the Torma shifters had niggling doubts or worries about their time held prisoner, they were far better at pushing them down than me.
When I left the bakery, I ate my pastry—which she hadn’t even charged me for because apparently I wasthe shitthese days. Wandering into a few other stores, I dropped more questions, but all the answers were the same. I’d been with Torin over the past two months, getting our pack life back in order. Everything normal. No drama.
And yet for some reason I was missing every damn memory of that. Why did no one have a reasonable explanation for that?
As I continued down the street, having exhausted almost all the available store owners, an empty shop caught my attention. At first, it was because I couldn’t remember this street ever having an empty storefront, but soon after, it was the oddest feeling that I’d spent a lot of time inside those walls.
When I got no answers from peering through the partially boarded-up windows, I stopped in at the hardware store beside it, knowing Magda, my least favorite town gossip, would know what was up.
“Been empty for years,” she said without pause, chewing her gum loudly. “Some sort of water leak that no one could find or repair.”
“I could have sworn there was a shop here the last time I came to town,” I murmured, staring out the hardware store window toward it.
Magda scoffed, her wrinkles deepening so she looked every one of her hundred and fifty years. “You haven’t been into this part of our town for months, and before that, we were all in stasis, and even before that, there was a flood that washed the shop out. Nothing has been there in your lifetime.”
“And what shop was it before my lifetime?” I asked, wondering if I’d seen old photos or something.
She paused, her brow scrunching until her eyebrows nearly hit her yellow-blonde hair. “You know, I don’t remember.”
I pulled my gaze from the other shopfront to stare at her. “What? You’ve never forgotten a damn thing.”
She clicked her tongue at me. “Watch your mouth, missy. Alpha-mate or not, you will respect your elders.”
In what world was uttering the word “damn” not respecting my elders? But, for the sake of possible information, I shot a quick apology her way. The older shifters had the weirdest hang-ups, but at this point, I needed her more than she needed me.
“I remember books,” Magda finally said, but then her eyes tightened again, like that hurt her to say. “Or maybe I’m wrong. There’s never been a bookstore here, so I… don’t know.”
She wandered off then, looking mildly dazed as I continued to stare at the building.Books?That felt… right. The moment I had the thought, my temples were stabbed by invisible knives, and now I was the one walking off rubbing my temples.
